The controversy waxed warm in the Senate, and in the press throughout the country. The effect of it was that the confirmation of Mr. Cleveland's nominees for important offices was postponed for several months, in some cases eight to ten, but as they were exercising their functions under temporary appointments, it made no difference to them. When they were at last confirmed by the Senate, they received commissions dated from the appointment which took place after the advice and consent of the Senate. So the four years, for which they could hold office, began to run then, and when a new Administration of a different politics came into power, they held their office for a period considerably more than four years, except a few who were actually removed by President Harrison.
I do not think the people cared much about the dispute. The sympathy was rather with President Cleveland. The people, both Republicans and Democrats, expected that the political control of the more important offices would be changed when a new party came into power, and considered Mr. Edmunds's Constitutional argument as a mere ingenious device to protract the day when their political fate should overtake the Republican officials.
I united with the majority of the Committee in the report, for the reasons I have stated above. I still think the position of the Senate right, and that of the President wrong. But I never agreed to the claim that the Senate had anything to do with the President's power of removal. So I took the first opportunity to introduce a bill repealing the provisions of the statute relating to the tenure of office, which interfered with the President's power of removal, so that we might go back again to the law which had been in force from the foundation of the Government, in the controversy with President Jackson. A majority of the Republicans had attempted to do that, as I have said, in the first session of Congress under President Grant. But it had been defeated by the Senate. So I introduced in the December session, 1886, a bill which became a law March 3, 1887, as follows:
"Be enacted, etc., That sections 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, and 1772 of the Revised Statutes of the United States are hereby repealed.
"Sec. 2. This repeal shall not affect any officer heretofore suspended under the provisions of said sections, or any designation, nomination or appointment heretofore made by virtue of the provisions thereof.
"Approved, March 3, 1887."
But the blood of my Republican associates was up. I got a few Republican votes for my Bill. It passed the House by a vote of 172 to 67. Every Massachusetts Representative voted for the Bill, as did Speaker Reed. But in general the votes against it were Republican votes. Governor Long made an able speech in its favor.
In the Senate three Republicans only voted with me. Among the nays were several Senators who, as members of the House, had voted for a Bill involving the same principle in 1869. Mr. Evarts, though absent at the time of this vote, declared his approval of the Bill in debate; and so, I think, did Mr. Dawes, although of that I am not sure. Mr. Edmunds opposed it with all his might and main.
Mr. Sherman, always a good friend of mine, remonstrated with me. He asked me with great seriousness, if I was conscious of the extent of the feeling among the Republicans of the Senate at my undertaking to act in opposition to them on this and one or two other important matters, to which he alluded. I replied that I must of course do what seemed to be my duty, and that in my opinion I was rendering a great service to the Republican Party in getting rid of the controversy in which the people sympathized generally with the Democrats, and that I thought the gentlemen who differed from me, would come to my way of thinking pretty soon. The result proved the soundness of my judgment. I do not think a man can be found in the Senate now who would wish to go back to the law which was passed to put fetters on the limbs of Andrew Johnson. I have asked several gentlemen who voted against the repeal whether they did not think so, and they all now agree that the measure was eminently wise and right. The opposition to the statute of 1887 was but the dying embers of the old fires of the Johnson controversy.